Week 8 – Shamima Tahaminah

Laura Bolin Carol’s essay Backpacks v. Briefcases: Step Towards Rhetorical Analysis discuss the importance of rhetorical analysis in our lives as it helps make conclusions about things and decisions. After reading the essay, I learned several things I haven’t known before one of them being how we subconsciously use rhetorical analysis in our everyday lives. I never gave it a second thought of how we use our years of experience of associating things based on what we know of them. Rhetoric analysis has always been there but we never really pay much attention. It also never occurred to me that people who advertise or people on the media take that as an advantage in consumers. Carol even mentions, “Because media rhetoric surrounds us, it is important to understand how rhetorics works. If we refuse to stop and think about how and why it persuades us, we can become mindless consumers who into arguments about what makes us value ourselves and what makes us happy.”. This was very eye-opening and made me more conscious about the next decisions I would make in buying or as simple as presenting myself at events. It also made me think about how the speeches incorporated this as well so I would need to go back and look more carefully. Finally, the last thing I learned was about the three parts to understanding the context of rhetorical moments which were exigence, audience, and constraints. I learned how these factors can play a big part in our essays on interpreting the speeches and understanding it’s rhetorical purpose. Before I didn’t even know what exigence was but now that I know the three things to look for in the speech I can use that to help improve my essay.